25.7.06

When work and news collide

Adding to E's earlier post and showing it's not just footy news I read, check this out.

It's a BBC article on how three men were arrested, tried and cleared of plotting terrorist attacks using a substance called Red Mercury.

Why is this different from the usual articles about terrorism in this day and age of the Global War on Terror? Well, because of this:

"...the fact that no-one in the court could be certain whether the terrifying substance on which the entire prosecution case was based actually existed."

It gets better:

"[The Crown Prosecutor] told the jury at the outset: "The Crown's position is that whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant.

[He] said the fact was that the three defendants had hit upon a meaning for it as a substance which was highly dangerous and expensive, and they pursued it." (emphasis added)

Yes, read it again: it was the meaning of the substance, a substance which may or may not exist, that led to these men being arrested. In other words, it did not matter whether Red Mercury was real or not but how its meaning was moulded in language. This then led to observable actions such as the arrrest and prosecution of those men and their labelling as potential terrorists.

"So, ultimately, in order to understand nature it may be necessary to have a deeper understanding of mathematical relationships. But the real reason is that the subject is enjoyable, and although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial, and we should take our intellectual pleasures where we find them."